


The Fate of a Ship-Builder's Son

by mydeira



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-28
Updated: 2013-07-28
Packaged: 2017-12-21 15:30:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/901910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mydeira/pseuds/mydeira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ethan Rayne reflects.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fate of a Ship-Builder's Son

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Savvy’s Soul Cages challenge (on LiveJournal in June of 2005), wherein we were assigned a song from the Sting album Soul Cages to use as inspiration for art or fic. Since I’m still trying to figure out which end is up with Photoshop, I went with fic. It’s what I do, after all. My song: “Island of Souls”. And not surprisingly, it involves Ethan. Thank you to Savvy for the great idea and the beta.

_What else was there for a ship-builder’s son  
A new ship to be built, new work to be done_

 

Ethan wasn’t proud of his humble beginnings.  There was nothing of pride to be had in poverty.  It was dirty and bleak and hopeless.  So fucking hopeless.  Forgetting you ever went through it was the only thing to be done.  And even then it haunted you.  Always stalking your steps, ready to spring up and announce to everyone what a sham you really were, to reclaim you, to pull you back down.

 

The acrid tang of molten steel never quite faded, rising up every so often to destroy the pleasantest of smells.  It could turn a rose garden into a fallow bed of corpses, no longer sensual but sickening in their sweetness.  That odor did something to him that no other sensory memory of his childhood could do. 

 

He would have sold his soul to get away from the yards, where a man was broken and bent before he turned thirty.  Alcohol provided the only respite from the drudgery and toil, a black hole to squander away the hard earned pittance and making certain that you’d never leave.  But Ethan’s soul was still intact, despite arguments to the contrary these days.

 

Fortunately, his father was killed in an industrial accident when Ethan was still young enough to be shipped off to relatives for the remainder of his upbringing.  A rich, distant uncle of his mother’s provided a home and education, however unwillingly.  It didn’t matter much to Ethan that he was despised by his relatives; he had gotten free from the yards.  That was all that mattered.

 

But his uncle’s was just a stopping place on his way to grander things.  He had been freed from a life of servitude to great steel gods.  The world was his. Ethan spent a week at Oxford before saying to hell with it and heading to London.  He never spoke to his uncle again.

 

_He felt he’d been left on a desolate shore  
To a future he desperately wanted to flee_

London was freedom, but it was far from paradise.  Poverty was nipping at his heels once more, but he refused to do factory work or hard labor of any kind.  If he did that, he might as well have been left in the yards.  So he stole to eat, to get high, but never to drink.  Alcohol was cheaper to come by, but it was too much of a reminder of the life he’d fled.

 

As skilled as he had become at picking pockets, his luck had run out and he had been caught.  But the authorities and a cramped holding cell weren’t what awaited him.  Instead, his mark, a powerful sorcerer, had taken Ethan under his wing as an apprentice, giving Ethan a future for the first time in his life.

 

Ethan learned quickly and soon discovered that the anger, frustration, and humiliation that he had carried with him for so long were a very powerful source to tap into.  Unfortunately, his studies were only just beginning when his mentor was struck down by a vengeful colleague.  But Ethan knew enough by then to continue on his own.

 

Not long after, he fell in with Deidre and Philip, Thomas, Randall, and lastly, but most definitely not least, Ripper.  They were all amateurs, fools fumbling in the dark, each running away from something.  It was only a matter of time before tragedy struck one of them down, scattering the survivors to the wind.  But it had been good while it lasted.

 

_Caught in the flare of acetylene light  
A working man works til the industry dies_

 

After that, Ethan never relied on anyone but himself ever again.  It was the only way to ensure survival.  Other people made you weak, dragged you down.  So he lived his life for himself and him alone, and gave little thought to the price others paid so that he could get by.

 

His powers grew, and it seemed that nothing would ever bring him down.  There had been a number of close calls, but he always found a way out in one piece, if not completely unscathed.  Something was watching out for him, even if he wasn’t always watching out for himself.  It was a matter of time, though, before that something stopped watching.

 

Old friends made enemies by life choices, betrayed one too many times to come to your aid, now gave you up without a backward glance.  And now, at the end of his life, Ethan was a prisoner once more, enclosed in a steel cage of a beauty his father could have admired in its simplicity and impermeability.  He doubted the soldiers knew how perfect the hell they’d put him in was.  Locked away, cut off from the sun and fresh air, trapped in steel like his father had been and his father before him.  And the stench of molten metal never faded.


End file.
